December 19, 2001
Brunswick, Georgia
Dear Friends,
The first year of the new millenium has given us many things to think back
upon and to recount with gratitude to you, our friends. We celebrated
Christmas of 2000 in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands at a party thrown by
ham radio operators for local and visiting radio amateurs alike. We
toasted in the third millenium in true cruiser fashion at midnight Universal
Time Coordinated (8:00 PM local time) in the quiet harbor of Hurricane Hole,
St. John, USVI.
We left the Virgin Islands at the end of January and had a nice three-day
passage reaching and running in strong trade winds to the Turks and Caicos.
We spent most of February exploring the islands of this little country, walking
the beaches and snorkeling the waters. We especially remember one day
when we snorkeled at the entrance to the South Caicos channel, where the
reef drops away to deep water in a short distance. There we saw couples
of rays swooping and swirling in an incomparable underwater ballet.
A little later the sight of a pair of menacing- looking black-tipped sharks
convinced us it was a good time to head back to the dinghy. Though
beachcombing and snorkeling are nice memories, we really spent most of our
time sitting aboard Sovereign, reading and waiting for the right weather
for each little hop from one place to another.
During March we worked our way up through the Bahamas, from Mayaguana in
the south, along Acklins and Long Island, through the Exumas, past Eleuthera,
and through the Abacos. Again we spent our time snorkeling, beachcombing,
exploring, reading and, of course, traveling. We enjoyed a five-day
wait for weather in tiny Little Harbor, Long Island with five other boats,
playing bocce on the beach during the day and exchanging sea stories over
cocktails in the evenings. Our favorite part of the Bahamas was Thunderball
Cave in the Exumas, where we dove under a rock ledge to surface inside a
large, hidden cavern, and snorkeled through schools of fearless fish.
In early April we made a quick two-day passage from the northern Abacos to
Brunswick, Georgia, our first time back on the North American continent in
a year and a half. We took the opportunity to rent a car and drive
around the southeast, visiting friends and family we had not seen in the
past two years. After our fill of visiting and filling Sovereign’s
lockers with provisions, we headed north up the Intracoastal Waterway.
It took us about three weeks of mostly motoring to make the 700 miles from
Brunswick to Hampton, Virginia. We had been along this route many times
in the past, but we enjoyed the calm anchorages, manageable distances, and
readily available weather reports that make cruising this area so much easier
than it is in the Caribbean. After a short wait for a weather window,
we headed offshore for Block Island, Rhode Island, where we arrived to the
scent of wild roses drifting on the breeze.
We worked our way up the coast of New England during June, reveling in the
“natural air conditioning” provided by the breeze wafting along the cool
coastal waters. For the first time in nearly two years we found ourselves
wearing long pants, socks, and shoes, and even the occasional jacket.
After sweating for so long in the tropics, we really enjoyed the change.
Maine is our favorite place of all, and we enjoyed sailing “down east” with
the prevailing summer breezes and watching the typical wildlife: seals
shyly poking their heads above water, sunfish the size of car tires basking
in the sunshine, and cormorants and guillimonts scurrying away at Sovereign's
approach. We spent the 4th of July in Southwest Harbor, Maine, watching
the fireworks shoot through a hundred feet of clear air only to burst in
a muted diffusion of fog.
We spent the balance of July in Nova Scotia, exploring the eastern shore
from Cape Sable to Halifax. We found Nova Scotia like Maine, “only
more so”. The water was a little colder, the fog a little denser, the
waves a little larger, and the people just as friendly. We spent about
three weeks there before returning to Maine. We regretted having so
little time to spend, but we had travel commitments for my family reunion
in early August that required our return.
After the reunion we cruised Maine for the rest of August, going as far east
as Roque Island, then working our way back along the winding, intricate,
and intermittent route of Maine’s Inside Passage. The highlight of
this part of the trip was gathering fresh mussels at low tide and steaming
them for the evening meal. We worked our way back towards the west
and south, taking advantage of occasional gaps in the prevailing southwesterly
winds, and mostly motoring. By September 11th we had made it as far
as Castine, Maine, where we had just enough television reception to watch
the terrible events of that day unfold. As we recovered from our shock,
we continued down the coast, making an effort to visit new harbors and a
few of our very favorite old ones.
As autumn progressed, we sat out a series of strong cold fronts and we tried
to dash south in the small openings between them. We spent three days
in Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts waiting while a gale blew over, and another ten
days in Newport, Rhode Island as a combination of gales overhead and tropical
storms well offshore provided either strong winds or high seas that kept
us put. We snuck into Long Island Sound on a short break between storms,
and worked our way westward up the Sound in only three days. We stopped
in Oyster Bay and took the Long Island Railroad into New York City to see
the devastation for ourselves and to heed the Mayor’s advice that the best
way to help New York was to come and spend money.
After leaving New York, we passed the Mid-Atlantic states in two short offshore
hops, from Sandy Hook, New Jersey to Ocean City, Maryland, and then on to
Hampton, Virginia. Mid-October in Virginia is the height of boater’s
migration season, and we locked through the Dismal Swamp with 14 other boats.
Changeable weather and more offshore storms kept us in the Intracoastal Waterway
for two and a half weeks. The low point of our trip here was snagging
a gill net around Sovereign’s propeller in North Carolina and having to hire
a diver to cut it away. We had a short 36-hour passage from Georgetown,
South Carolina, which brought us into Brunswick, Georgia in building wind
and seas, and we docked Sovereign at Brunswick Landing Marina on November
12, 2001.
Sovereign is showing the signs of having been “ridden hard and put away wet”
for the past two and a half years, so we have decided to take some time off
from cruising and get her back into shape. We have rented an apartment
here in Brunswick and have moved everything off the boat, including ourselves.
For now we are working on re-varnishing the interior and touching up some
of the rusty spots on deck. We are enjoying all the amenities of shoreside
living that we have missed for most of the last 13 years. We are being
enticed by hot showers, cable TV, air conditioning, and a refrigerator that
opens at the front and doesn’t require us to run the engine for an hour just
to keep it cold.
We are looking ahead to 2002 with not a little trepidation. We know
that we will need to start making money again soon, but we haven’t worked
out the details. We would like to do something less stressful than
our former careers. Jim is hoping to make use of his commercial captain’s
license, and Cathy is thinking about a job in a bookstore or perhaps a veterinarian’s
office. For the first time in two decades Jim is contemplating a future
that might not include living aboard a boat. For two old salts like
us, this land life--despite the fact that the bed doesn’t move and we don’t
have to worry about dragging anchor—is just a little scary.
We wish you the best this Christmastime and throughout the New Year.
Smooth sailing,
Jim and Cathy